Simone de Beauvoir — "The female is a female only in relation to the male. Otherwise, she is an incomp…"
The female is a female only in relation to the male. Otherwise, she is an incomplete human being.
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More from Simone de Beauvoir
"It is by no means an accident that man is a male."
"I am a feminist because I believe in the equality of men and women."
"There is no way to be a woman. There are only ways of being a woman."
"The present is not a potential past; it is the moment of choice and action."
"The greatest adventure is to live your life as if it were a work of art."
About Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)
French existentialist philosopher whose The Second Sex (1949) is the foundational text of modern feminist theory. Closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre (lifetime partner and existentialist co-founder) and Albert Camus (existentialist contemporary in Paris). For an intellectual contrast, see Camille Paglia, American cultural critic and Sexual Personae author — Paglia argues for biological-essentialist roots of gender that Beauvoir's social-construction view — 'one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' — explicitly rejects. The two are the cleanest constructed-vs-essentialist poles in feminist theory.
The standard scholarly entry points to Simone de Beauvoir's work: Toril Moi (Duke, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor) — Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman (1994); Margaret A. Simons (Southern Illinois University, Emerita) — Beauvoir and The Second Sex (1999); Kate Kirkpatrick (Oxford, Regent's Park College) — Becoming Beauvoir: A Life (2019). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Simone de Beauvoir.